Coming to Terms

Sometimes it’s hard to keep trudging through life when so many things have gone wrong. A lot of people don’t have this kind of life experience, but a lot of us do. Things happen and while there are so many who will look down on anyone for feeling ‘victimised,’ I think it’s important to call a spade a spade and say yes, I was victimised by this person or that event. It was not my fault. That way we don’t internalise it and feel like we’re bad people for ‘letting’ something happen (and if anyone tells you that unjustifiably, that’s insanity), or that we’re whiners for saying it was wrong.

Another difficulty is that the lasting effects of whatever trauma we’ve experienced can be so challenging we often feel ‘broken.’ We wonder why we can’t just enjoy things anymore, why we cry at television adverts, why we’re scared of things that other people find trivial, or why our load feels so much heavier than the next person’s.

My mom was struggling with some of these feelings after I became pregnant with my firstborn. (For those of you who haven’t read it, the back story is here.)

She and I were at a camp in Hungry Horse, Montana, for our traditional weekend away. We used to go every year if we could help it, it was the only thing you could call a “vacation” or “holiday” that we ever really took. It was a church-based retreat, and to this day, that campground remains my favourite place on Earth.

This particular summer, I had just turned fifteen, and, being pregnant with my firstborn, my mom and I both had a lot to process. The incident and the uncertainty of the future were weighing heavily on our minds. We were not wealthy by any means, and never owned new vehicles or anything like that. Choosing to keep my son was my immediate choice and I stuck by my guns, but it was not going to be easy. My mom was supportive of my choice, and was willing to help, but was no doubt under pressure about the situation.

One night at the camp, I was already deeply asleep in the cabin. Mom was in Teakettle lodge, the mess hall, playing board games with others until probably midnight when it was time to lock up. Most other campers were also asleep. There are no lights on the campground after a certain time, so with her flashlight lighting her path she made her way back to the cabin.

When she got to our door, she realised she had forgotten to bring a key. Up in the mountains, in the dark, no shelter, no blanket, and everyone fast asleep. She tried waking me up, but I sleep like a rock and I’m not sure an earthquake could wake me. Bears have been known to come wandering through the camp, the end of May is not summery enough to keep the ground from freezing overnight, and it rains there a lot. I’m pretty sure sleeping on the ground was not going to work out very well.

She didn’t know what to do.

We may not have had much but we did have an old Ford Explorer. Being old and second-hand, the door was broken and wouldn’t lock. Thankfully it was so beaten down no one would steal it, and on this night my mom was able to get into it and out of the cold, much to her relief.

As she reclined her seat to get comfortable, she was thinking about my situation and how sorry she felt for me and what I was going through. She had been praying about it, asking what to do about it all. It was, after all, a retreat where prayer was one of the main focuses. It was then she heard a voice from the back seat say, “It isn’t broken, it was prepared.” She turned to see where the voice came from, but there was no one there.

I realise that this will sound bonkers to many and immediately at the mention of “prayer” about half of you or more will roll your eyes. And that’s fine. I’m not pressing any beliefs onto anyone or indeed, reflecting any of my own. But I know my mom was really shaken by this experience in a good way, and it has had its impact on my life as well.

Sometimes when things really get on top of me, I think of this. Yes, I have been victimised in the past by many things. No, I will not be ashamed of that. I do feel like I was given an extraordinary load to carry, and I also feel it’s important to tell people about it, no matter how personal. I am a survivor, and a fighter. Yes, I have felt ‘broken’ so, so many times. But I choose to believe that for whatever reason I was not ‘broken,’ I was prepared.

I especially believe this because my son, despite the circumstances of his conception, is an awesome little (big) boy. He’s going to be twelve soon, which is really strange to think about. Throughout the years he has been an excellent motivation to keep being a better, stronger, more resilient person despite the many times it has been so incredibly difficult I have seriously wanted to quit.

In no way do I view his entering into my life a ‘breakage’ of anything. His existence has opened my eyes to many things and given me a perspective of the world that I would never shun. I don’t yet know what my purpose truly is, but I know it isn’t to sit still feeling broken and helpless.

Since the day my mom first told me this story, I’ve never looked at anything the same.

If you have a story of something being ‘broken’ but turning out to be ‘prepared,’ I’d love to hear it.

Feel free to comment below or blog it and link to this post to get my attention.

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Chances are good you found this blog either from Freshly Pressed or my post “A Letter of Regret From Your Anxious and Depressed Friend” was making its rounds somewhere on a social media site. While the letter was many things, it was not fiction or hyperbole. Many people can relate to parts of it but few will relate to all of it. That’s because, naturally, it was created from my own experience. I am so glad it’s helped in whatever way to so many people, and that’s why I posted it publicly. In fact, most of this blog is dedicated to helping open eyes in one way or another, but what it isn’t dedicated to doing is garnering sympathy for myself. That is the last thing I want.

No, I am not suicidal. I speak more about this in “My Conversation With the Un-Dead” and “Keep Going (My Conversation With the Un-Dead Part 2)” where I state, “sometimes we have our reasons for either continuing to fight or giving up the fight.” I have two very good reasons to continue to fight: my children. This does not mean my mind doesn’t jump to scenarios in which I think, how would this look differently if I weren’t here? And, I wish I didn’t have to do this anymore. For a long time, I thought those feelings were completely normal. But there are people who never imagine how much easier it would be to take a quick exit, and I think those people are very fortunate. But I am also fortunate.

My two beautiful reasons to keep fighting I just mentioned, are a privilege. Many people do not have this privilege. Do I want to be a mediocre mother who cares more about her own pain than her kids’ futures? Hell no. I didn’t work so hard to be a mother for the past eleven-and-a-half years, forfeiting what many people thought would be a “better life” than being a mother at age fifteen, to suddenly quit because the going got tough. Depression, anxiety, and PTSD have definitely changed me, but I’m a stubborn little shit and refuse to accept defeat.

Throughout school I was bullied intensely. There was not a day that someone didn’t have something to say about my appearance, clothing, religion, participation in class, family, what have you. (I’ll give details of this in a story later.) My things were stolen and vandalised, I was not allowed one day of peace. At home I wish I could say at least it was peachy there, but it wasn’t. My mother was a single mom of two (stubborn little shits) and while I believe she did her best, and believe that she believed she did her best, she had her own issues that created an environment that could sometimes be equally, if not more, destructive. We were alone in Montana, far away from family, and we had little. The budget of everything- money, patience, time, etc., was stretched a bit too far. Although things evened out a bit when this incident happened, and my sister left home, I was soon left with a new set of challenges that ultimately became unbearable and I felt I had no other option than to start afresh somewhere far away, in Utah.

So while I did leave home at sixteen, I did not give up on school. As I told in this story, getting re-enrolled and graduating was a whole lot of work. What I didn’t include in the story was that I also worked part-time jobs, starting a couple of months after my eldest was born, because I had to in order to make ends meet. My sister and her boyfriend watched my eldest son for me while I was at school and work my senior year. Had it not been for them, it would not have been possible. They continued to watch him as I began attending Westminster College full-time (and still worked full-time) until the day my son called my sister “Mom.” Because I was already struggling to pay the rent due to my hours spent in class, beating myself up that my grades weren’t doing as well as I’d hoped, and popping caffeine pills to keep awake to do all these things (to the point where I had a residual twitch in my eye), this one word was the wakeup call that it was no longer worth it. My son meant more to me than a degree. But I have never quite been able to release the guilt that came with it.

Part of getting into college/uni was getting scholarships, because Westminster is expensive. One of these scholarships was based on two essays, one about my greatest achievement, and one about how we can make a better future. I can only guess my essays were good because I won out of all applicants in the nation that year, which came as a huge shock. I have always found it difficult to believe something I did deserves any kind of award, but nevertheless, I was extremely honoured. They were so kind. And while accepting the award in front of the attendees of their convention, I gave a speech:

“To say that I am grateful for this award is not enough. Instead, I would like to tell you all why I am here. I did not get this award because I was good at sports or because I had a perfect 4.0 average, or some rare, coveted talent. I got this award because I happened to be presented with an opportunity to share with others my ambitions and values… I offer my deepest gratitude, and also my word that I will never let this award go to waste. It is an investment in a life that is going to impact others’ lives tenfold.”

Pretty big words for an eighteen-year-old girl with no crystal ball. But my passion was genuine. I meant every word. So as I grew older and saw how all my friends were still in school and on course to graduate and I was not, I felt like a liar and a failure.

During the time I would have still been working for a degree, many things happened in my life. I got into a relationship that turned out to be abusive, got pregnant, left my job, became an agoraphobic, lost my house and got news about The Accident while eight months pregnant, lost my sister, parted with the baby (the only daughter I ever had… read about that in Dear Lucy), and many other things… then ended up in the UK, married and about to have my youngest child.

I’ve been here for five years and while the original intention was to have a large family of in-laws around and do the “mom thing,” I found myself in the circus of a master narcissist. Although I’ve chosen not to be involved with them any longer, the lasting damage they caused added itself to the pile. I am an outsider here, and yes it’s hard to make friends when the British Way is so different than the American Way, including but not limited to, talking about pain.

Not talking about pain may make you more likely to be accepted in the superficial friend circles, but I have never been popular. Because I have never been popular, I don’t care if I’m not popular. In fact, it kind of scares me if ever I find myself in such a position. But the flipside of this is that yes, it is a lonely existence. I have been through so much that I can’t stand small-talk. That ability to hold small-talk conversations left me when my sister was in the hospital. After that I’d have panic attacks where I got overwhelming waves of emotion leaving me feeling like I was never going to be okay again. There are times when I feel fine, but occasionally a trigger happens that sends me into a despair, a depressive state for a while, unable to have normal conversations because the depression is overwhelming.

The past several months while experiencing one of these depressive states, I had to withdraw from humanity. I spent a lot of time with my kids, and when they went to bed I’d often weep. I’m going through some kind of stage of grief and I’d cry with a sense that my eyeballs would pop out of my head and my stomach was being clenched. I went through months of zero appetite, and months of too much appetite (you can read about this here) and felt I was shutting down, dying, one piece at a time. I’m not working right now, because I can’t. My symptoms and conditions are affecting my life in all aspects. And I hate this.

I have come through all these things and been okay, I thought, until the panic attacks started coming on a near-daily basis. Having the work ethic I do, I can’t help but feel like that much more of a failure. It’s humiliating to be in this position for someone like me who has been so independent for so long. And it would be easy to accept that this is where it ends, this is what’s become of me. Let go of the reins. Give up the fight.

On May 31st, 2015 I had this moment. I was silently sobbing in bed, trying not to wake the kids. It was a sort of panic attack, but no hyperventilation. Just sobbing, weeping, crying. Feeling worthless, hopeless, stupid… all the undesirable titles anyone has ever thrust upon me and more, because when you’re conditioned enough, the abusers don’t even need to do any of the work, as you’ll walk into the cage all by yourself (like in this story) and do the harm without any of their help.

I’d written “A Letter of Regret” three weeks prior and submitted it to an online publication because I thought it was worth being seen and distributed. They hadn’t responded. I had about five days left to wait for any word, but on this night where I was up until three in the morning crying and wondering what in the heck I was doing wasting my life waiting for something to come along and make a change, make me feel like it was all worth it up until this point, I got angry. Not angry at the publication for their lack of response, but angry with everything.

I REFUSE TO GIVE UP. I REFUSE TO BE A STATISTIC. I REFUSE TO BE DEFEATED. I REFUSE TO DIE LYING DOWN.

I can’t have the same kinds of jobs I used to have. My nerves can no longer handle the extreme stress of the industry. And I have a lot of talents, but I’m a terrible salesperson. I’ve been telling myself “I need to start writing again” for years. People have told me to write a book, mediums have told me I’m going to write a book (think what you want about that), but the only thing I’d written in about a decade was one story which I’ve yet to release. So in my little moment, I decided it was time to just do The Thing. Get back up.

The first day of June I started this blog. I wrote the About page. I wrote a few more posts, put up that letter, and shared them on some Facebook pages. Suddenly the letter got a whole lot of attention, and the comments of support were overwhelming. Then came Freshly Pressed, which kept me awake until three in the morning again, but for a different reason. It reminded me that while I am not profiting from any of this in a monetary sense, my contributions have value. In turn, my life full of hardship and struggling, peppered with the odd triumph, has had value. I have a unique perspective, combined with a love for words and a firm grasp of the English language. I may not know how to get a book published, but I’m not going to let that stop me from telling my stories.

I refuse to accept that my life has been for nothing. There are too many unexplained coincidences and blessings for me to think I’m meant to hold a run-of-the-mill job, which I’ve now learned I’m not fit to do. I am a wonderful kind of weird and I feel like I was given an extraordinary gift of resilience and an ability to communicate it in a way that can teach. And I refuse to allow what feels like the breaking of my spirit (the anxiety, the panic attacks, the depression, the PTSD) to be the final chapter of the book of my life. Excuse my language, but… Fuck. That.

Someone, somewhere, needed to hear one or all of these things. And that one person, maybe that person is you, whom my words have helped, you are why I chose to speak out.

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I always wondered where most of my looks came from, because I don’t look that much like my mom.

I’d heard all kinds of stories about him, and used to imagine what it would be like if he were around. His head was so big they had to special order his hat at the mine, my mother would tell me, they used to call him ‘buffalo head’ and he was a black belt in karate.

He never remembered my birthday, except once when I turned eight and got a card in the mail from him. Well, he almost remembered. The date he’d written in the card was three days late. His memory must’ve been really bad, because he always forgot to pay the child support, too. Ten long years and not a penny.

The last time I’d seen him I was two years old and eating peach flavoured yogurt. He and my mother were embroiled in a brawl that landed her with two black eyes and a broken ankle. She said she was leaving. He made my sister and I sit on his knee and choose with which parent we wanted to live. I was never able to stomach peach yogurt again.

As the years passed I learned why I was so afraid of Chucky from Child’s Play; he thought it was funny to put my head in the dark attic and tell me “Chucky’s gonna getcha!” I learned my feet looked just like his. I learned he used to work in the mines as an engineer and hated when my mom put a jumpy snake in his lunchbox. He was rumoured to be the best piano player in cowboy boots anybody had ever seen. I learned he always broke his word, that we shouldn’t get our hopes up for those “daddy promises.”

My mom told me stories of the things he used to do to her and how convinced she was that he had once plotted her murder. He was thwarted by a passing hiker. I believed her at first but then wondered if she was just angry because he wasn’t the husband he should’ve been. You were supposed to be a twin, she’d say. None of his brothers pay child support. They all do this. Maybe he wasn’t paying, to punish my sister and I for choosing to live with Mom. He had two new children now, maybe they were more important. What did he need us for, anyway?

At the age of fifteen I finally got to meet this man, the myth, the legend. He really did have a buffalo head. He really did wear cowboy boots. He looked so much like me. I wondered how many of the other things were true.

One of the first things he said to me after thirteen years of being a stranger, was “I should’ve killed your mom when I had the chance.” I was stunned. We ate pancakes at IHOP and went to the mall. He spent money on me. He saw I had a three-month-old baby, yet he pinched my sides and said, “You need to lose that weight.”

After enduring rants about how my mom just wanted to mooch off him and the government, and diatribes of how amazing he was and how much better my life would’ve been if only I’d got to live with him all these years instead, still I agreed to keep in contact with him. He was a smart man, and some of the things he said could be pretty convincing. But so many other things were so critical.

He said he’d pay for a landline phone so he could have a number to reach me. He said he’d call, but after the first week he never did. He emailed me for a while but his emails were like conversing with Jekyll and Hyde. I never knew what to expect.

Finally I said I couldn’t take it anymore, that there were two sides to every story and then the truth. I was sick of being in the middle of the tug-of-war between his accusations and my mother’s defence, and my mother’s accusations and his angry backlash.

He called me a “whore” and a “slut” for having a child so young. I was “going to be a welfare slob just like [my] mom” and he wanted nothing to do with me.

A year passed, I moved to Utah to live with my sister. He promised to help support me and my son, saying how glad he was I was finally getting away from my mom. “I guess you’re kind of my responsibility too,” he’d said. But it was another daddy promise. And after an argument where I’d defended my sister’s boyfriend (who is a good man) he told my sister he wanted her, “but not bozo and not bitch.”

I tried to enrol myself in high school there to finish my junior year. Without a custodial parent to sign papers, I’d be charged $5,000 to be able to finish. “You’re telling me, a teenage mother who is trying to defy the odds against her, that I need to be wealthy just to get a high school diploma? Where do you think I’m going to get five thousand dollars?” The one thing I wanted, to beat the statistics, shot down in one phone call.

One week into the new school year, I tried a new approach. The don’t-ask-don’t-tell approach. I called a different high school. They told me yes, come down today, it’s already started… in fact, you’re a week late. Bring a parent to sign the forms. I told my dad, “You’ve done nothing for me my entire life. If you do nothing else, please just come and pretend you have custody of me and just sign these papers so I can finish school. Please.” He said I didn’t need a diploma, I could just do what he did and get a GED and a scholarship for the mining program at the U of U. I insisted I just wanted to finish high school. He told me I was stupid, but he went with me and signed the papers anyway.

A few weeks into it they called me to the office. They’d found out I was living with my sister and my baby. They knew I didn’t really have a parent there with me. I thought I would be in trouble, but they had nothing but respect for me and wanted to offer some support. This came in the form of a mentor and a few phone calls to my old school. My old school sent revised transcripts to show what grades I would have had when I left three-quarters of the way through my junior year, and together the new counsellor and I calculated how many more credits I needed to graduate. If I failed even one, I’d miss out on that diploma.

In the time I’d been pregnant my freshman year, given birth in my sophomore year, and been a mother my junior year, I’d worked so hard to get the best grades I could. During the second year I taught myself my lessons at home. I had to omit some extra “elective” classes which took out that room for error. Now even with college-level Pre-calculus and Physics on the roster, I had to keep that ball rolling. It wasn’t about just finishing for me, it was about finishing with flying colours. I had something to prove.

The end of the year came. I’d scored 26 out of 36 on the national Aptitude Competency Test. I’d achieved a 3.8 out of 4.0 Grade Point Average. I’d written two essays and won the Accepting the Challenge of Excellence award on the national level from the National Exchange Club. With that scholarship and some founder’s scholarships I earned by my ACT and GPA scores, I was accepted to Westminster College, my college of choice, due to start that fall.

But now it was graduation day. And all I wanted was that picture everyone gets to have at the end of the ceremony, smiling with their family and their diploma in hand, adorned in their cap and gown. My reward to myself for making it to the finish line despite every challenge set before me, a sunny picture of me and my son together with the piece of paper that said YOUR STATISTICS CAN SHOVE IT in my grasp.

My son to came to the ceremony with me; I had asked my friend if she would watch him. I begged my dad to come. He insisted he had more important things to do. I pleaded, I told him it was important to me. He reluctantly agreed. Thinking it would be better than to force my young friend to keep this toddler quiet during the ceremony, I asked my dad to sit with him instead. He did, or at least he said he did.

The ceremony ended and there were all the graduates with their families taking places on the lawn and getting out their cameras. I trekked up one hill and down the next, around the front and then around the back. I couldn’t see my son or my dad anywhere. I called to find out where he was so we could get that picture; He said he’d seen me cross the stage and then he left. I was devastated. I’d worked so hard for several years with this exact moment, this treasure, in mind. I trusted him, and he let me down. I should’ve known better. Just another daddy promise.

A short time after, his mother came to town for a visit. I was invited to dinner to meet this woman for the first time. She was cold and I didn’t like her. He was extra jolly, but maybe that was just another twenty-one ounce glass of straight whiskey taking hold. He bragged about his cooking skills, bragged about his more important kids and their piano lessons, and then put his arm around me.

“Guess what my daughter did? My daughter got into Westminster just like you, Ma. She gets those brains from her dad.”

Finally he claimed me, and it was nothing like I’d ever hoped or imagined. I hated it. I hated him. I hated all the things he’d ever promised and failed to produce, his daddy promises, and all the words he’d ever said, and his arm around me.

This was my accomplishment, and he was using it to pat himself on the back.

I was angry at him for a long time. But instead of being angry, I choose to be thankful; It helped make me who I am and realise how much I don’t need his acceptance…

I claim me. And because of this man, I claim the son of this slut that much more. I am there for every performance. I am there for every graduation. And I’ll take photos of every. damn. one.

At one point I thought his greatest gift to me was signing the papers to get me back into school, but now I think his greatest gift was showing me how not to be a parent person. I have wisdom and resolve and determination far beyond my years. And I don’t have to wonder where I got that, because for this, there is no question.

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A friend of mine will soon move to a new house and has been consumed with the process of packing for quite some time. He lamented the fact that no matter how much he gets done he continues to see piles and stacks and shelves full of things yet to be boxed. Adding to the stress, he’s nearing the semester’s end of coursework towards a Master’s degree. This combination has him overwhelmed. He complained a bit more about the work left to do.

“I’ll never finish.” he moaned after his update.

“Well.” I said. “It’s like that row of tomatoes.”

He didn’t get it.

With no idea what I meant he stared into the distance preoccupied by stress. Then, remembering similar comments of mine in the past his head whirled back towards me. “Wait, is that another Nannie thing?” he asked.

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Thank You

Dear Reader,
Your support with every click, like, share, and comment is immensely appreciated.
This blog is to help lift up all humans, one word at a time. Thank you for your kind words and encouragement, and I wish you all the best.
Sincerely,
-Talkingthisandthat

About the Author

Kirsten is a late-twenties writer passionate about the way humans interact with the world and with one another. She was the 2006 A.C.E. Award national winner through the National Exchange Club of America. She loves things like bright colours, artwork, and yarn, but hates lipstick.